Category: Vocabulary

Testing TakeOver - Tips for Teaching During Testing

4/28/2017

Spring is in the air… Which means it's time for testing! As a Spanish teacher, testing technically doesn't affect me at all. But with PARCC and MAP testing back to back, testing can feel overwhelming for both students and teachers. Not only are students’ brains a bit friend, but also, I miss classes due to the testing schedule.

Testing, however, does not need to keep you from teaching. In fact, this is a great opportunity to try a new idea you had or to play with the way in which you and your students interact with the curriculum. Here are just a few tips for keeping the learning alive during testing:

1. Turn everyday games into live action. Games are a great way to work with content without students thinking it’s work. Even better, live action games get students moving and expending energy as they think. Whether you want to focus on vocabulary or practice asking and answering questions there’s a game for you.

Human Tic-Tac-Toe: Set up a tic-tac-toe board on the ground and divide the class into two teams (X and O). Students answer a question (or ask a question about a vocabulary word) in order to move into the correct space. You can do this as a class or get multiple games going to get more students involved. Provide each group with a stack of pictures, words, definitions, etc. to work from so they can continue to play after one team wins.

Flyswatter: Everyone loves a chance to hit the target, but the way it’s traditionally played doesn’t keep the whole class involved. Change this game around by printing multiple sets of pictures of your vocabulary list and place the pictures all around the room – on the tables, floor, walls, etc. Divide the class into multiple teams (if you have 3 of each picture, make 5 teams, for example) and give each student a number. Call the number and call a word. Students with the number called find the word around the room. The students that find the pictures get a point for their team. Make sure to set some ground rules, though: walk don’t run, only one student per picture, play in silence, you have to give a sentence for each picture to get a point, etc.

2. Think Outside the Classroom. A lot of times, testing affects multiple teachers’ schedules. While it can be a pain for everyone, it also gives you the chance to do some shared activities. One great activity is a scavenger hunt. Divide the class into teams and create clues for them to find certain teachers. You can make the clues as easy or as difficult as you want. At each stop, have students ask a question. For example, students ask the librarian her favorite book or the art teacher her favorite artist. If a teacher wants to participate but won’t be around, just leave their picture hanging with the answer. J Once the clues were written, it didn’t take much to organize the clues and get the treasure hunt set up. Want to extend the activity? Have students work in groups to write different clues and create their own treasure hunt around the school.

3. Involve the students. Testing can be a perfect excuse to let loose and play some games. My students really wanted to play Quizlet Live, but I didn’t have the decks set up for them. I was able to quickly create sets to match word and picture, but I wanted something more. I created a list of as many vocabulary words as I could from the year and previous years in a Google Doc. I shared the Doc and asked students to write a description for as many of the words as they could. We wrote some sentence starters and talked about what kind of things they could write and it was off to the races! I was able to quickly create a deck of over 50 words in one class period to use with them the next day. Not only did they have a blast playing the game, but they did all the work!

4. Make them move. Right after finishing a test, it can be a lot to ask students to sit still for another 30 minutes; especially at the elementary level. To keep it Spanish focused, however, I didn’t want to take them out to the playground to run around. Instead, we moved all the tables to the side and did some kid-friendly workouts in Spanish. You can search YouTube and find some great stuff – just make sure to watch it first of course!

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Word Clouds

5/31/2016

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Over the years, I’ve gone back and forth on whether I like word clouds or not. After attending Amy Lenord’s session on Liberation from the List at Central States, I decided to give them another try. Over the past few weeks, I’ve worked with the clouds in various capacities to get the most out of their use. Here are a few of the activities:

1. Introduction of vocabulary
Copy and past the content of a website into the word cloud site and create! Once the word cloud is complete, students can begin by searching for cognates and words they know. I also encourage them to make educated guesses about words based on what they already know about the language. Students can share all the words with the class, and this becomes their vocabulary list. Once students have found these words (which usually ends up being WAY more than they could imagine), have them write a short summary of what they think the website might be about. For novice mid students, you may just have them write the most important words from the cloud. Now that you’ve activated some prior knowledge, students can read through the text and do various interpretive activities.

2. Info gap activities
There are a few different ways to do info gaps with word clouds. For my 3rd graders, I created a word cloud with adjectives and asked students to highlight the words that describe themselves. Once they did that, students paired up and asked each other about the various adjectives, highlighting with a different color on the word cloud. Students finished by creating a Venn Diagram to compare themselves with their friends. This could work with any set of vocabulary in terms of likes and dislikes.

In the 5th grade, I used word clouds to condense an “All About Me” page from a blog post. I created two clouds – one for each post. Students answered questions about their post based on the cloud and then partnered up to ask and answer questions based on their cloud.

3. All About Me
Word clouds are also a great way to present information. They can be used to start the year as a way to introduce students to one another or at the end of the year to sum up the various vocabulary pieces the students learned. I find that providing a brainstorm document of some sort helps students organize their thoughts and put more information into the cloud.

4. Guess Who
A word cloud is a great way to play Guess Who? in class. Students create their cloud without their name and their classmates try to guess who it is. The other day, I had students move from cloud to cloud. Not only did they guess the name of the person, but also wrote palabras claves, key words that helped them determine to whom the cloud belonged. Some were obvious, such as the student obsessed with the Cleveland Cavaliers and Lebron James, and others were much trickier as multiple students participate in the same activities.

There are various sites you can use to create your world cloud. Here are a few that I’ve used in the past:

-Wordle: This is one of the original sites and provides you the ability to change fonts, colors, and word direction. The more times you write a word, the larger it becomes. You can copy text from websites, song lyrics, etc. It requires flash, so it cannot be used on a iPad. It often asks for updates and seems to work best on Firefox rather than Chrome or Safari.
-Tagxedo: This site is similar to Wordle, but also allows you to create the word clouds in various shapes. It also requires a plugin, but once downloaded, works just fine. It also works best on Firefox or Safari.
-Tagul: My favorite of the three at this point, Tagul works on any browser and also on the iPads. It gives more freedom than the others in that colors, fonts, and word directions can be changed for individual words or the word cloud as a whole. Tagul does require a login, but if students have Google accounts through the school, they can use them here. The benefit of logging in, however, is that the site saves your work and you can return to it later.

How do you use word clouds in class?

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Taking it to the Next level - Connecting Students to Content

3/26/2016

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I don’t know about you, but as long as I’ve been a Spanish teacher, I’ve always taught some iteration of activities students like to do. Sometimes it’s sports focused while other times it’s plans for the summer. No matter what, kids like to share what they do. Over the years, like many others, I’ve tried to find different ways to incorporate this into larger themes or ideas – no more me gusta without a purpose or intent. I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a thematic unit around world sports for the past few years, but it never seemed to gel. With the help of some great ideas from #CSCTFL16, I think I’ve finally started to pull it together. With the summer Olympics just around the corner, I figured this was the perfect time to get my butt in gear!

Part of the push to focus on the Olympics, or anything other than just sports, was that many of my students had no interest in sports. Ask them what they like, and they say “I don’t know”. If the goal is to have interpersonal conversation, that obviously isn't going to work. With the Olympics, however, there are something like 42 events to choose from. There has to be at least one that interests everyone! (Or at least I hope!) While still a work in progress, the unit is starting to take shape. Here are the current essential questions:

As a way to introduce the unit, I shared the official Olympic events symbols. Without any information, I asked students to match a set of vocabulary words to the pictures.

After attending Amy Lenord’s Central State’s session on List Liberation I went back and forth on whether to provide any vocabulary at all. After some internal debate, however, I decided a set of core vocabulary was necessary to get my 4th graders started, but to let them go from there. The personal vocabulary piece is essential to maintain their interest, but at this age, I believe they still need a starting point. Once students matched the vocabulary I gave them (mostly cognates or words they needed to think about but could guess), they were tasked with finding 3 extra words which they shared in groups.

Once we matched the vocabulary, we began the conversation about the Olympics with this great infographic:

Using interpretive reading strategies from ACTFL’s Implementing Integrated Performance Assessments, students worked in groups to see what they could figure out. There is a lot of language here for a 4th grade novice mid, so I made sure to focus their attention. Students already saw the pictures in a previous activity, which helped bring down their affective filter. This map gave us the opportunity to talk geography (Where is Brazil? What is the capital?) and language, since many students don’t realize that Brazil is not a Spanish-speaking country. I also made sure to focus a question on the transportation available, to give students an opportunity to add these words to their vocabulary. We used the map to practice our interpersonal skills with questions about what activities are available and the similarities and differences in the offerings at each stadium. By breaking students into 4 groups (one per stadium), they needed their classmates to answer questions about event availability before they decided which stadium location they might choose to attend.

Sadly, neither my 4th graders nor I will be attending the Olympics this year. And even if we were, the students certainly would not be planning the trip. Keeping this in mind, I decided to focus on what students might watch with their friends instead of what they might attend. In 4th grade, they may not be planning travel, but they are deciding what to watch on TV and with whom to hang out.

Using the schedule of events, we did some more exploring of what was available when. Central States keynote, John De Mado, discussed the need for students to “guess” effectively in order to continue their language growth. Acting on this principal, I focused my questions on sports that students had possibly come across, but would not necessarily know. For example, they know correr is to run, but could they figure out Track and Field based on the picture and previously hearing the information in conversation? If they know nadar is to swim, can the determine that nado sincronizado is synchronized swimming? It seemed easy enough, but for some of my 9 year olds, it was a push. Not only did the schedule allow me to bring in more vocabulary, but also to have the conversation about the date in Spanish. Despite having this conversation before, the students ALWAYS seem to get tripped up! Another crack at a cultural difference (and numbers practice) is always a plus!

The schedule was also a great way to talk about student interests around the sports. Since each word has a picture associated, there is less stress in choosing activities that might not be so popular or easy to decipher. If I like archery and you like fencing, it doesn’t really matter that they aren’t cognates. I have the pictures and Spanish there to assist me! As students started talking about which events interest them – moving away from me gusta and introducing me interesa – we also added in some adjectives to describe why. Yet another chance for guided interpersonal practice (woohoo!). Using a simple chart, students tracked their friends’ answers and talked about who had similar interests. (I use this structure a lot for interpersonal practice so students can clearly see the questions they are working with and also keep track of the information.)

As we move forward in the unit, we will look at medal counts as a way to further practice numbers in context. Lord knows we need the practice! Eventually, students will predict what country might win the most of each medal and why. Students will take on the identity of an Olympian in a sport they enjoy and will do a presentational activities with personal information as well as information about their sport, which will lead to a final interpersonal.

Bringing the Olympics into the classroom is so much more than just activities. We’re making connections to geography, math, culture, and beyond! Using authentic resources to guide the conversation makes the language more real and gives it a purpose beyond the classroom walls. So many of my students play sports that are involved in the Olympics, and now they have a chance to share about themselves in a cultural and language context.

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Making Conversation Happen

10/14/2015

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My job as a teacher at the novice level is to provide my students with the building blocks to creating conversation. That is, to give them set questions, phrases, sentence starters, and conversation structures that they will eventually use to create their own language (pushing them into the intermediate level). Not only do I provide the language chunks, but also the opportunities to use that language. Almost every activity we do is based on creating conversation. The distinction between conversation and speaking is important, as my goal is to encourage a language exchange between two or more people, rather than a one-sided answer.

I explain to my students that conversation is like a tennis match: the goal is to volley the ball (or the language) back and forth as many times as possible.
A tennis match isn’t very exciting if one person serves and the other is unable to return the ball. The longer the volley goes, the more intriguing and exciting the game becomes. This is our goal.

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Pushing for Proficiency Through Conversation

9/28/2015

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It's the first day of school, and one of my fourth-grader says: “Are we going to learn how to speak Spanish next year?”. “No!” I respond. “You're going to learn today!” What he really wanted to ask was if he was going to speak in Spanish the same way he speaks in English. As much as I would love to tell him that by the end of fourth grade he would be fluent in Spanish, but the reality is that he won't. Until this moment, I never thought to share the proficiency guidelines put out by the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Language (ACTFL). I just did not think it would matter to an elementary school student. The more I think about it, however, the more I see the importance. In order for our students to understand their growth potential, however, we need to be clear on what we truly expect them to do. ACTFL provides proficiency levels to help guide us through our language learning.

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Making 90% Target Language Work For you

5/15/2014

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http://tinyurl.com/m4g536a

I never thought teaching in the target language (TL) was possible; it just seemed too difficult. How would the students understand me? How could I give instructions they could follow? What would classroom management look like? I struggled to comprehend how both my students and I would function.

Looking back it seems somewhat silly to not use the TL for instruction in a World Language classroom. What is the language classroom for, if not for immersing students in a language-rich environment that mimics the real world? Thinking back to my own study abroad experience, I remember the first few weeks as terrifying - I couldn't understand or respond to anyone! Is that what I really wanted for my students? TL usage had to change in my classroom.

Moving from 90% English to 90% TL, however, was not just about me, the teacher, but also the curriculum, the approach, and, of course, the students. Here are some quick and easy ways to make TL use the norm rather than the exception:

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Building Better Sentences

3/4/2014

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When learning a new language, creating sentences with that language can be one of the most difficult tasks. Students can easily respond with a single word, and the more advanced students make simple sentences. While this is great, and an important part of the progression of learning a language, I always want more! Helping students create strong sentences is a challenge in their first language, so can we really expect them to create complicated sentences in a novice level language class? Of course!

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Testing TakeOver - Tips for Teaching During Testing

Word Clouds

Taking it to the Next level - Connecting Students to Content

Making Conversation Happen

Pushing for Proficiency Through Conversation

Making 90% Target Language Work For you

Building Better Sentences

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